$299 version of Acer’s C7 Chromebook kind of defeats the purpose

What's the point of a cheap laptop that isn't so cheap?

When we reviewed Acer's $199 C7 Chromebook, we didn't think it was perfect, but we were willing to overlook many minor flaws in the face of its $199 asking price. Today, Slashgear unearthed an upgraded model—there's an Acer product page that lists a $299 version of the C7 with a larger battery, 4GB of RAM instead of 2GB, and a 500GB hard drive instead of a 320GB model.

Of these three upgraded specs, there's only one that really impacts the core features of a Chromebook: the battery. Indeed, the four-ish hour battery life was one of the worst things about the C7, and this boosted model promises about six hours instead. However, neither the RAM nor the hard drive will really benefit Chrome OS, which is mostly happy with 2GB of RAM and doesn't require more than a few gigabytes of disk space. Add this to the fact that the $199 C7 is extremely easy to open up and upgrade yourself and it makes even less sense, though doing so will void the laptop's warranty.

The upgraded model seems to nullify the key selling point of the C7: it takes something that is most notable for being the cheapest Chromebook Google sells and makes it the third cheapest Chromebook Google sells, after both the $199 model and Samsung's $249 ARM Chromebook. It might be useful if you'd like to install an alternate OS like ChrUbuntu without voiding your warranty by opening the $199 model up to upgrade it, but otherwise our recommendation is to stick to the cheap one.

I was kind of taken back by how limited it is. Spending in excess of $200 for such limited functionality seems like a strange option, given that you can get something that runs a far more functional OS for just a bit more.

Some really pointless upgrades there. If they'd have moved to a decent 8bit IPS panel and larger battery then it might start to at least justify the added cost, but upgrading hd space on a cloud centric device seems completely pointless, and while maybe upgraded memory does something for a device with such limited functionality I can't believe there's a lot of heavy multitasking stressing out the memory allocation.

The extra battery life could be good, if it didn't come saddled with the unnecessary upgrades and an extra $100. The way Liliputing put it, sounds like they were planning on releasing either an extended battery for the $199 model or this version of the notebook. I hope extra extended batteries become available for a reasonable price, since 50% more battery life might be worth another $50 to some. Also, it seems ChromeOS is 32-bit only for now. 4GB would be maxing out the memory it can handle, which may be a benefit if you're loading up dozens of tabs. So if you plan to stick with ChromeOS instead of loading another distro, there may not be much sense in upgrading beyond 4GB on your own.

Interesting. I agree that the battery is the biggest upgrade, hopefully it breaks 5+ hours. But the 4gb of RAM should make a difference also. All x86-based Chrome devices so far have been capable of running 64-bit mode but Google has kept devices with just 2gb of RAM (Cr-48, Samsung Series 5, Acer AC700 and OG Acer C7) running 32-bit Chrome OS because the performance increase of 64-bit didn't justify the extra hit on RAM. 4gb RAM devices (Samsung Series 3 Chromebox, Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook) run 64-bit Chrome OS though.

I wonder if this new version will have a 64-bit image? If it does, that should offer some performance improvement also.

Google should just drop ChromeOS altogether and finally release a full-featured desktop-oriented Android Linux distro. That would be way more useful and desirable, helping to leverage Linux usage on Desktop along the way.

I was kind of taken back by how limited it is. Spending in excess of $200 for such limited functionality seems like a strange option, given that you can get something that runs a far more functional OS for just a bit more.

I agree that it is limited but it certainly has its uses. I bought a Chromebook for my mom since her "computer" usage amounts to websites and email. Given that everything is stored "in the cloud" by default, my support calls are nonexistent. Couple that with the fact that if her Chromebook is destroyed/lost/stolen, once she logs in to a replacement it will not function any different than her old one.

A tablet would have also sufficed for this but the Chromebook is substantially cheaper for a similar sized screen and there are less hiccups with a physical keyboard and trackpad.

I'm so disappointed in Google for the spinning drive. That should be a total no-no in a chromebook, which doesn't need storage, but which clearly sells on convenience. It's a huge step back for the brand, price be damned.

I was kind of taken back by how limited it is. Spending in excess of $200 for such limited functionality seems like a strange option, given that you can get something that runs a far more functional OS for just a bit more.

For me, I think the key is maintenance-free and simple security - the responsiveness of an SSD in a netbook can't be beat, either. The original chromebooks were really good on battery life, too.

I have a windows 8 pc as my flagship, for media management and some gaming but the chromebook is a good dinghy depending on your needs.

I suppose Google needs the OEMs that they can get for the moment; but I'm a trifle surprised that <em>they</em> aren't trying to put a stop to this sort of spec-war stuff.

If ChromeOS is supposed to be all 'the-internet-is-the-computer-feel-the-simplicity', they certainly don't want anybody cranking out hardware too weak to handle crunching a whole lot of javascript; but they also have little to gain from SKU profusion over nigh-invisible things like HDD size.

In an ideal world, it would seem that Google would really want segmentation by build quality, and possibly a desktop replacement/all in one:

One poor people/tinkerers/beater computer for travel plasticy crap model that is as cheap as possible.

One pretty OK, nothing too fancy but the screen isn't shit and nothing creaks when you pick it up.

One bloody beautiful, with an actually high-resolution screen, no shiny plastic shit, and 100% solid state

Especially since the OS minimizes offline stuff, why descend into the morass of inscrutable SKUs that differ by HDD size?

The extra battery life could be good, if it didn't come saddled with the unnecessary upgrades and an extra $100. The way Liliputing put it, sounds like they were planning on releasing either an extended battery for the $199 model or this version of the notebook. I hope extra extended batteries become available for a reasonable price, since 50% more battery life might be worth another $50 to some. Also, it seems ChromeOS is 32-bit only for now. 4GB would be maxing out the memory it can handle, which may be a benefit if you're loading up dozens of tabs. So if you plan to stick with ChromeOS instead of loading another distro, there may not be much sense in upgrading beyond 4GB on your own.

The os has memory paging, you can install 16gb of ram and it will use up to 4gb per thread.

These upgrades are worthwhile for someone who wants to throw Chrubuntu on it. In fact, the upgraded model is really enticing for someone who wants to run Chrubuntu on their Chromebook, especially since the ARM version doesn't cut it even for playing 720p fullscreen YouTube videos.

I can't imagine any case in which I would buy a laptop that runs ChromeOS. I'll keep my almost three year old EEEPC with it's nearly 10 hour battery life and a real operating system that does everything ChromeOS does and about a million times more, thank you very much.

3. So pull out the HDD and install an inexpensive (relatively), low-power-consumption 64 or 128 GB SSD from Samsung (830) or Crucial m4 (other SSDs just consume too much power--'active' and 'idle'-- to help out with battery life)(hint: wait for them to go on sale. Again.).

4. It has a FULL complement of ports.

5. It is completely upgradeable. Well, at least as regards HDD and RAM

The Acer C7 line is basically a re-purposed lightweight laptop, minus Windows.

In my opinion, Acer missed an opportunity by offering a model with a 500gb HDD, although it's amazing how many columns and blogs consider this to be an asset. An upgraded C7 with 16gb SSD, 4gb of RAM, and larger battery at $249 would have offered serious competition to the Samsung ARM Chromebook.

Because you can't really stop the Chrome browser in Chrome OS, it tends to consume memory over time that cannot be released except by a restart, so 4gb of RAM is a genuine asset. It's my understanding that the ARM chip used in the ARM Chromebook is limited to 2gb of addressable memory (like the Atoms in first-generation Chromebooks), and it cannot take advantage of zRAM swap, which is extremely useful on an Intel Chromebook with 2gb of RAM.